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The cause was multiple system atrophy, a progressive brain disorder, his son Sacha
said.
A disciple of Roland Barthes, Mr. Todorov became prominent in the 1970s for his
work on structuralism, a method of interpretation — influenced by cultural
anthropology — that focuses on recurring patterns of thought and behavior.
He developed his study of the formal processes of storytelling into a 1973 book, “The
Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre,” which examined the structural
features in fantasy-based texts like “Arabian Nights” and Kafka’s “Metamorphosis.”
Mr. Todorov’s later books included intellectual portraits of the thinkers Benjamin
Constant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Mikhail Bakhtin; he compiled, based on
extracts from her letters, notes and diaries, the unwritten autobiography of the
Russian poet Marina Tsvetayeva.
His 1989 book “On Human Diversity” looked at how French authors have
approached “the other,” and it made the case for both universal values and respect
for diverse cultures.
“He helped me look at the world in a different way, to step outside the frame of ‘them
and us’ that was always being built,” Rony Brauman, a former president of Doctors
Without Borders in France and a longtime friend, said in a phone interview. “He had
such a remarkable open mind, always looking beyond appearances, refusing to be
hypnotized even by great evil, but searching for empathy. In his writing and in
person, there was always that impressive capacity for kindness and good will.”
Mr. Todorov’s book “Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps”
(1996) took note of the paradox that human decency and goodness exist even in the
most evil situations. The volume was “a tribute to the small number of ‘just’ men and
women who showed both courage and generosity,” the political scientist Stanley
Hoffmann, who died in 2015, wrote in a review in the magazine Foreign Affairs.
In “The New World Disorder: Reflections of a European” (2003), written on the eve
of the invasion of Iraq, which the French and German governments and many
Europeans opposed, Mr. Todorov urged Europe to abandon its “pacifism and
passivity.” He told The New York Times: “Our potential enemies are no longer inside
Europe. We must join forces to defend ourselves against these external enemies.”
Yet he did not see immigrants to Europe as threats. In his 2009 book, “Fear of the
Barbarians: Beyond the Clash of Civilizations,” he wrote: “One can demand from
newcomers to the country that they respect its laws or the social contract that binds
all citizens, but not that they love it: Public duties and private feelings, values and
traditions do not belong to the same spheres. Only totalitarian societies make it
obligatory to love one’s country.”
“To systematically bomb a town in the Middle East is no less barbaric than to slit
somebody’s throat in a French church,” Mr. Todorov said, referring to the beheading
of a French priest in July by assailants inspired by the Islamic State. “Actually, it
destroys more lives.”
Mr. Todorov said that French intellectuals’ longstanding fear of national decline
resulted from “the fact that in the 20th century, France moved from the status of a
world power to the status of a second-rank power.”
“This explains, in part, the bad mood that is constitutive of the French spirit,” he
said.
In the interview in Le Monde, Mr. Todorov said he was skeptical of the concept of
good, preferring simple kindness. He cited the Soviet novelist Vasily Grossman, the
author of the World War II masterpiece “Life and Fate,” as someone “for whom evil
mostly comes from those who want to impose good on others.”
Mr. Todorov was born on March 1, 1939, in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, the son of
Todor Borov, a university professor, and Haritina Peeva, a librarian. He did his
undergraduate studies at the University of Sofia. Then, like his contemporary Julia
Kristeva, the philosopher and psychoanalyst, he moved from Bulgaria — then in the
grip of the longtime Communist dictator Todor Zhivkov — to France to pursue
postgraduate work.
Mr. Todorov completed his doctorate under Barthes at the School for Advanced
Studies in the Social Sciences in 1966, and he began teaching at the National Center
for Scientific Research in 1968. In 1983 he helped found the Center for Arts and
Language Research, involving scholars from both institutions.
Mr. Todorov became a French citizen in 1973. His marriages to Martine van
Woerkens, a scholar of India, and to the novelist and essayist Nancy Huston ended in
divorce. He is survived by a son, Boris, from the first marriage, and a daughter, Léa,
and a son, Sacha, from the second.